George Rafferty joins the Russell Sage College baseball coaching staff for their inaugural season. He brings with him over 40 years of experience having coached various youth, high school, and college sports.

Most recently, he served as the head varsity softball coach at Hudson Valley Community College. In addition, he spent several seasons as an assistant coach at University at Albany for Vince Carnevale in the early 1980’s. He has also had stints at nearby South Colonie and Troy High Schools. While at Troy, he coached baseball, football, and girls’ softball. He was named the Times Union Coach of the Year in 2013 after leading the softball program to their first Section II Championship title in 25 years. In addition, he has led his teams to three Big Ten Championships, three Section II Championships, as well as three New York State Regional Championships, as well as three New York State Final Four appearances. He collected a 106-28 mark with softball from 2011-2016, for a .769 winning percentage.

Rafferty has also coached the South Troy Dodgers for a number of years under the tutelage of George Rogers, including the 2000 Elite Connie Mack team that competed in the Connie Mack World Series and became the National Runner-Up. In 2018, Rafferty was inducted into the Troy High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

As a baseball player, he was named Outstanding College Athlete of America in 1975 at Hudson Valley Community College. In 1978, at SUNY-Brockport, he was named first team all-conference, First Team All-State, as well as First Team All-District, and was nominated for the All-America team. At SUNY Brockport many of his single-season hitting records lasted for nearly 20 years, and are still among the program’s best to this day.

He also competed in various baseball leagues until he was 48 years old. In 1994, he was inducted into the Albany Twilight League Hall of Fame, and in 2003 was inducted into the Capital District Senior Men’s Baseball Hall of Fame.

In his spare time, he holds membership in the Screen Actors Guild, and Actors Equity and has appeared in many feature films, television and stage productions. Among his credits include roles in the feature films Ironweed, Malcolm X, Primary Motive, Under Heat, Stonewall, and Cobb. He has also appeared in episodes of Law and Order, Third Watch, New York Undercover, and toured the United States in the production of A Christmas Carol starring John Astin.